when to prune the gardenia

natives_and_veggies(10b)June 9, 2012

Any advice? I'm basically working on my mother's and grandmother's wisdom when it comes to woody stemmed flowering bushes - only prune them immediately after they bloom because they set buds in the stems early. But that is basically azalea wisdom. And I'm not sure it applies to gardenias.

Mine is very happy (it gets lots of coffee grounds and no other care.) It's getting a little leggy, so I want to cut it back a bit, hoping to encourage more bushy growth. Now that it's pretty much done blooming (but sent out a couple late blooms this week) am I safe to prune it a little?

FWIW, we have a gardenia in the common area here that gets attacked monthly by the Texas chainsaw massacre every time they come around and it still blooms as regularly as it did when the woman who planted it was alive to shoo them away.

that's good info writersblock! I'm thinking I'm babying this baby too much. Maybe it's time to start hacking a little bit.
It was a problem child, and I almost gave up on it at one point, when the bugs were trying to kill it. So I cut it down - but couldn't completely kill it. I cut it just above the graft and left it to its own devices to grow back.
And it came back better than ever - so much better than it was originally. I think it needed time to establish roots without having to concentrate on leaves and blooms. And I think it needed coffee grounds. It gets a lot of coffee grounds now. And it shrugs off bugs.